Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

"Now, dear," he blared through this instrument – "go to it and show us all you've got. Don't be afraid of letting yourself go. Remember, this is your Big Scene, biggest you've got in this story, your one grand little chance to put it over that you're a sure-enough actress… That's it" – the elderly leading-man ushered Lucinda into the set from the living-room side, laid a finger to his lips, and pointed down the hallway before disappearing – "that's it – nod to show you know what he means. Now you start for the back door. You haven't thought yet it would be a swell idea to stop and listen to all they're saying about you. But now you do, now you hesitate, turn, look back at the door, frowning. Pretty work. Now go back, but not all at once. Make us see you don't think you ought to do this sort of thing, make us see the big struggle with your better nature, and better nature losing out. Good. Now you put your ear to the crack in the door and hear your name. Give a big start and look horrified. You never dreamed men could talk about women like that, you know, you wouldn't have believed Richards and Dick could talk that way about you. Show us horror, dear, and make it strong, you can't make it too strong. Remember: you're just realizing the man you love is such a rotten cad he could make a bet about your virtue. It just makes you feel sick all over – !

"Great snakes! what's that for? What's the matter?"

For of a sudden Lucinda laughed outright, suddenly the heart-rending tremolo of Nolan's voice as he detailed the awful offense Richards had committed against Nelly in the play tickled irresistibly her sense of the absurd; and her laugh followed naturally, inevitably, uncontrollably.

Now as Nolan with a frantic wave bade the cameraman cease cranking, she made a sign of helpless appeal and, inarticulate with mirth, rested weakly against the door and held her sides.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Nolan," she gasped. "Forgive me, I – I didn't know I was going to laugh till – till – till it struck me as so funny – !"

Her voice rose and broke in another peal of hysterical merriment, her words became unintelligible, while Nolan literally ground his teeth.

"What struck you as so funny?" he exploded. "Show me anything funny about this scene and I – I'll eat my megaphone. What's so damn' funny?"

"Oh, I am sorry!" Lucinda was doing her utmost to sober herself, but still her voice shook and her body rocked with recurrent spasms of idiotic mirth. "You see – when you said that – what you said about Richards being a rotter – all at once it struck me – I'm sure I don't know why – as funny, too awfully funny for words!"

"Well, why?" Nolan insisted, all but dancing with rage. "Hell! Give me a reason. Why's it funny?"

"Because – well, you see – I don't like to criticize, you resent my suggestions so – but really, you know, this is a ridiculous way to expect Nelly to carry on when she hears what she hears. She isn't in love with Richards, she isn't even in love with Dick; and surely" – Lucinda was now rapidly growing serious in her anxiety to justify herself to Nolan's face of a thunderhead – "surely she oughtn't to go all to pieces just because she hears Richards confess, what she's known all along, that he's the sort of a man he is."

"Listen here: who's directing this scene, you'r me? Who wrote the continuity, you'r me? Who knows best what this story's all about, heh, you'r me?"

"But, Mr. Nolan, I'm sure, if you'll just think a moment you'll see it isn't natural for a girl like Nelly to rant like a tragedy queen over this situation. She'd be hurt, I grant you, and she'd be angry, angry with herself as much as with Richards, but she wouldn't tear around in this corner like a – like Lillian Gish in Broken Blossoms when's she's trapped in the scullery and her father's breaking in to murder her. Don't you see?"

"Sure I see." Nolan spoke with an unwonted evenness of tone, for him; but the tone was ugly. "I see a lot of things. I see you've made up your mind to try to make a fool of me, arguing about my visualization of this scene like you have. I see you're dead-set on making me so mad I'll give up my job rather than go on trying to make an actress out of screen-struck near-society dame. Well, all right, you win. I resign. I'm out. You've got your wish. And this time I don't come back, not if you was to go down on your knees to beg me to finish this fool picture!"

In an abrupt break of fury, oddly out of keeping with the level tone he had used, Nolan raised the megaphone above his head and with all his might cast it upon the floor at Lucinda's feet.

"And that ends that," he announced quietly, and walked off, leaving Lucinda in a temper curiously divided between relief and regret. For this time, she was sure, Nolan meant it.

XXXVI

At a late hour that afternoon the war council of the incorporators of Linda Lee Inc. stalled on dead centre.

Prolonged discussion had failed to suggest any means of salvaging the argosy of their fortunes from speedy foundering. No sort of success had rewarded the quest of a navigator at once competent and free to take command of the venture which Nolan had bungled and abandoned; so far as could be determined, there was none such at liberty. And when Lucinda had once more iterated her unshakable refusal to countenance overtures looking toward the reinstatement of Nolan, silence spellbound the four gathered together in that tiny, ill-furnished room which served Lontaine as an office, the silence of spiritual discouragement and mental enervation.

Fanny alone seemed quick with an elfin fire which enabled her to skim lightly the surface of that slough of despond in which the others were one and all so sadly bogged. Perched on the writing-bed of Lontaine's war-worn desk, she sat swinging pretty legs in the space between the pedestals, and smoking a cigarette, her abstracted but amused gaze roving out through the single window, the most elusive and illegible of smiles flickering about her paint-smeared lips.

Against an end of the desk leaned Iturbide – bidden to the conference because of his wide and intimate knowledge of directors – with hands plunged deep into trouser pockets, his oval face of olive tint wearing that sullen cast which in the Latin is so often indicative of nothing worse than simple thoughtfulness.

In a common chair tilted back against the opposite wall Lontaine sat absently worrying his scrubby moustache with an exquisitely manicured thumb and forefinger. His look, too, was sullen, but with the sullenness of fears aggravated by patience worn thin and threadbare. He had not said or suggested as much by syllable or glance, yet Lucinda felt that he held her solely responsible for the break with Nolan, and was weary of the whole business to boot, and heartily wished himself out of it. But she regarded him without sympathy if with little resentment: his suggestion and his insistence had first wrung from her a reluctant consent to try her luck in pictures, his mismanagement alone (who had plighted such brave work of his superior intelligence!) had been responsible for the engagement of Nolan; now it was for him to find some way out for them all.

But the most curious of her impressions concerning Lontaine was one that seemed absurdly unfair, yet one from which she could by no means divorce her imagination, a feeling at once unfixable and insistent, that at heart Lontaine didn't really care, that he was contemplating quite callously the threatened wreck of his fair hopes and fine promises, was more concerned with enigmatic premonitions of a nature wholly personal and selfish.

Lucinda herself occupied the desk-chair of the president. Profound weariness temporarily held her faculties in suspense. Her least formless thoughts were of the evening to come, when she and the Lontaines were to dine with Summerlad in Beverly Hills. She was deciding to be beforehand with Harry and Fanny, that she might have a little time alone with Lynn.

Relentless association of ideas stirred up thoughts of Bel, speculations as to whether he had heard as yet, and what he had said, or what he would say and think when he did hear. Nothing would please him more than to see her pretensions collapse like a house of cards. Well … her temper grew hard with defiance … he would be disappointed if he counted on her heart faltering at this juncture. No matter how black the present outlook, she would go through to the end, be it sweet or as gall, and bow to the verdict of the public only, never to the blind bludgeonings of mischance.

For a little she pondered in mild puzzlement the riddle of Bel's relations with Nelly Marquis, recalling a scene that recently had been enacted by those two without their knowledge that she was near. A few nights since (last Tuesday, in fact; easy to date, because Lynn had attended the boxing-matches at Vernon, as he did every Tuesday, leaving Lucinda with an evening empty) she had been sitting alone on the veranda of the Hollywood, in a chair near the entrance but at the same time well back in the shadows, when Bel brought Nelly home at an hour indicating a late and leisurely dinner.

His car had swung up the drive to stop at the main entrance to the hotel, but neither Bel nor the girl made any move to alight. Unconscious of or else indifferent to observation, they had remained in the rear seat, pursuing a tense discussion, its nature unknown since only the confused rumour of their voices reached the ears of the onlooker; Bel forcing the argument, advocating Heaven-knew-what with a great deal of intensity, not much like his insouciance of everyday, while the girl, on her part, treated all his recommendations and prayers with an air of trifling, semi-coquettish, faintly derisive. But Bel's attitude wasn't in the least loverlike, more that of a man discharging a duty which he found distasteful but still couldn't bring himself to neglect, something that had to be attended to no matter how thankless…

The dispute continued for several minutes without appearing to get anywhere; and presently Bel leaned forward and spoke to his chauffeur round the side of the tonneau wind-shield, whereupon the car rolled out into the street and stopped again at the curb. Then Bel got down and helped Nelly out, and the two of them sauntered up and down the sidewalk, now visible, now hidden by the fretted screen of subtropical growths, but always with their heads close together, always with Bel maintaining his air of almost passionate seriousness, and always with the girl lightly obstinate and teasing.

In odd contradiction to this impression of her, Lucinda set the memory of Nelly's face viewed at close quarters when, having parted with Bellamy, she hurried up the drive and into the hotel, passing without noticing Lucinda. Then the illumination from the lobby, escaping through the front door, had shown her countenance printed with the look of a damned soul hunted to its last gasp, a look to haunt one's dream with a sense of terror abject and unabated, of savage passions unappeased and unappeasable.

What all this had meant, Lucinda couldn't guess. Of one thing only she felt fairly confident: it hadn't been a lover's quarrel.

Curious that one's mind should revert to that memory, at a time when it ought by rights to be exclusively occupied with one's own, peculiar, and never more critical embarrassments…

Altogether without warning Lucinda found herself staring into the homely, greasy grin of Isadore Zinn.

The owner of the studios, without troubling to knock, had opened the door far enough to permit the introduction of his head and nothing more of his person. For a moment or two he held this posture playfully, looking from one to another of the unhappy four with a leer at once inquisitive, knowing, and hideous. Then he thrust the door wide open, came in, and shut it behind him.

"Hello, people!" he saluted affably. "How you making out?"

"Ah, that good Mr. Zinn!" Fanny airily replied. "If you really must know, we're not."

Iturbide stirred and shook his head, smiling gravely. "We talk and talk all day, Mr. Zinn," he said gently, "but we don't get some place. You want to know why? Because there is no place for us to get."

"It's an impasse," Lontaine stated. Then remarking Zinn's nonplussed stare, he interpreted: "We're all in a blind alley, you know."

"Bet your life I know you are," Zinn agreed vigorously. "That's what I butted in to see you about. If I ain't in the way…" The four made reassuring noises. "I was thinking maybe they was something I might do to help out."

"I'm afraid not, Mr. Zinn, thank you," Lucinda replied with regretful gratitude. "That is, unless you can find us a director."

"Funny. That's just what I was going to suggest." The instant stir of animation encouraged him to grin more abominably than ever. "Lay my hands on the very man you want inside five minutes; only they's one catch to it – he's under contract to somebody else."

"Then I don't quite see – " Lucinda began. But Lontaine interrupted: "You mean we can buy the fellow's contract, what?"

Zinn wagged his head. "Not a chanst," he uttered in lugubrious accents – "not a chanst. I wouldn't sell that boy's contract for no amount of money you'd want to name. Best little comer't ever breathed hard into a megaphone, and I got him so's he'll eat out of my hand right now, and I'm going to get at least two good pictures out of him before I let him loose to get all ruined up by kind treatment. Wally Day's the lad I'm talking about. Got everything a guy ought to have to make a loud splash in pictures except the big-head, and he'll get that, too – all you got to do's give him time. Just now he's the only man I know could pull you out of the hole you've got yourselves into."

"But what's the use of tantalizing us?" Lucinda demanded fretfully – "if Mr. Day's services can't be begged, bought, or borrowed – "

"Well, I just got an idea maybe we could come to some sort of agreement about letting Wally finish up your picture. Like this, now: I been watching you people, the way you work, the way you been doing things, and seen a lot of your rushes, and I got an idea maybe I know how to make your picture right, maybe I and Wally could fix it up between us. Now listen: you've spent a bale of green money, I don't know how much, but a lot, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars, maybe more. That's all right. We don't have to worry about that till I come to look at your books – "

"Look at our books!" Lontaine expostulated.

Zinn pacified him with a gross hand that patted the air. "Sure I got to look at your books, ain't I, if I sit in on this production? What I mean is like this: You sell me the production as is, story, continuity, Miss Lee's contract, all your properties 'n' everything, and I'll pay you fifty per cent what it cost you to date, cash money. Then I and Wally and Miss Lee here'll go ahead and finish up, and it won't cost you anything more, Miss Lee, and I'll give you ten per cent. the net profits. Meanwhile you" – he nodded to Lontaine – "can be fussing around and taking your time about finding a studio all your own and getting all set to use Miss Lee again when I and Wally are done with her. If that ain't a sporting offer, I don't know. What you say?"

Lucinda looked dubiously to Lontaine. His eyes had suddenly grown more stony and staring than she had ever seen them, and she fancied that he had lost a shade of colour; but he met her glance with a quick nod and said in a husky voice: "I agree with Mr. Zinn, Linda."

"You advise – !"

"I think he's made a very handsome offer. It – it's a clear and easy way out for us. You can't lose as much as you stand to under our present arrangements, assuming things shouldn't turn out as well as we've been hoping, and you may make some money. And, as he points out, it will give us time to look around and make up our minds just what we want to do next. If I were you, I'd accept."

Lucinda delayed another moment, then turned to Zinn with a smile. "Very well, Mr. Zinn. If Mr. Lontaine's agreeable, I don't mind…"

"Fine business!" Zinn held out a mottled, hairy paw. "I and you don't need any writing between us, do we, Miss Lee? Your word's good enough for me, all right…"